Posted
by
timothyon Sunday January 25, 2009 @02:29AM
from the shadow-minister-is-such-a-cool-title dept.

downundarob writes "Senator Nick Minchin, the Australian Shadow Minister for broadband, communications and the digital economy, has written (or more likely a staffer has written) this interesting article on the Australian Federal Government's continued zeal to enforce ISP-level filtering in Australia. In the article he posits that 'Underlying the Rudd Government's plan to screen the internet is an offensive message: that parents cannot be trusted to mind their children online.' Meanwhile, we wait for filtering trials to start, trials that have been delayed and which have next-to-no support among the industry. Telstra BigPond — Australia's largest ISP — has refused to take part, comparing internet filtering to 'like trying to boil the ocean.' The third largest, iiNet, is prepared to participate to highlight flaws."

The censorship plan is really a giant signal to Internet bad guys that Australian law enforcement and intelligence gathering sucks, and that there is a disconnect between policy makers and intelligence gathers/LE. Anyone within the intelligence community would be able to point out that the smart bad guys would get around the censorship via technical or tactical means; that should have been enough to scrap the plan if their true goal was to stop the supposed bad guys.

The plan is entirely for the purpose of keeping fundie senators who hold the balance of power on-side. It's not meant to actually work. They have to try as hard as they can before admitting failure, meanwhile getting the fundie to help pass their legislation while they're stringing him along.

A shadow minister is a member of the opposition (the party that didn't win in our two-party system) who follows the actions of the elected minister (from the party that won). Generally they just criticise everything the actual minister does to try and make them look bad.

As an Australian, its a laughable story, particularly given that the then (1999) Communication's Minister, and orchestrator of this mess, Senator Richard Alston, came from the same Liberal Party that is currently complaining about it from the opposition.

If you look deeper, however, the joke is ironic because the Liberals only introduced the Bill to buy Independant, Senator Brian Harradine's, vote on the GST Tax Bill that they were so desperate to push. The sting in the tail being that Harradine voted against both the GST and Internet Censorship Bills because he felt that the Censorship Bill was too soft.

This was the year that the Federal Government sacrificed the future of Australian e-commerce and its reputation as an Internet early-adopter by attempting to censor the Internet from the bunkers in Canberra. The Broadcasting Services (Online Services) Act 1999 was a transparent inducement to Senator Brian Harradine to pass the Government's GST and Telstra legislation, the Government feigning a sudden interest in "adult" material online. It failed to achieve its political purpose - Harradine voted against both bills, and milder legislation later passed with the support of the Australian Democrats. However, the Government, and Senator Richard Alston in particular, were so captured by their own rhetoric that the censorship bill proceeded into law as an exercise in political muscle. Last-minute amendments urged on the Government by the Internet Industry Association have made an unworkable law even more uncertain, arbitrary and unfit for its stated purpose of protecting children from unsuitable material.

Bloody oath! Now it's Labor turn to suck up to an independent nutjob [wikipedia.org] who gained 2% of the popular vote but potentially holds the balance of power in the senate. The irony is that both major parties helped him defeat the green candidate who would otherwise have easily won the seat.

Thankfully my prediction that this BS will continue to go nowhere seems to be panning out - it's like the two major parties have agreed to an endless and distracting debate that does little except keep the moralising minority busy.

I like the idea and think one electronic senator is worth a try. Having said that I suspect most people are not willing to put in the time unless they are particularly interested in an issue. If that's the case then you will get small but determined bands of nuts enacting all sorts of wack job legislation simply because nobody else is interested. After all the good senator got his preferences (and seat) because nobody thought he had a hope in hell of winning.

The/etc/passwd file also contains information like user ID's and group ID's that are used by many system programs. Therefore, the/etc/passwd file must remain world readable. If you were to change the/etc/passwd file so that nobody can read it, the first thing that you would notice is that the ls -l command now displays user ID's instead of names!

The Shadow Suite solves the problem by relocating the passwords to another file (usually/etc/shadow). The/etc/shadow file is set so that it cannot be read by just anyone. Only root will be able to read and write to the/etc/shadow file. Some programs (like xlock) don't need to be able to change passwords, they only need to be able to verify them. These programs can either be run suid root or you can set up a group shadow that is allowed read only access to the/etc/shadow file. Then the program can be run sgid shadow.

By moving the passwords to the/etc/shadow file, we are effectively keeping the attacker from having access to the encoded passwords with which to perform a dictionary attack.

As an American, I must say, we need to take a look at this nomenclature: Shadow Minister sounds so much cooler than Senate Minority Leader or the like.

Under our system of government the party currently not in power runs a complete standby government. It is quite a good system because when you come to vote you already have a good idea of who will be in the important posts.

On the down side, ministers have to be members of parliament so their skills will be more limited than in the US system where the president seems to have the power to pick people from the broader population.

No - Minchin does not have any sense. It's just the "broken clock" principle at work here - the government's position is *so* wrong, that the opposition's default position of denigrating *anything* the government does (or proposes) happens to be right.

BTW, the current government was much the same when they were in opposition - in fact, their lack of *effective* opposition was a major reason they were in opposition so long. The NSW Liberal/National coalition (the conservatives) are in the same position - the

I fully expect to see (by AD 2505 when Idiocracy is in full swing, perhaps) a House of Representin' in which legislation features full-on battles between teleporting Shadow Ministers and weapon-wielding Whips. C-SPAN's ratings should go sky high!

In.uk, and I imagine in the dominions overseas, it is a mace. A very big one. In 1976 Michael Heseltine, a Tory, actually picked it up and used it to menace some Labour MPs.

And if I recall my Parliamentary urban legend correctly, the aisle down the centre was originally specified to be two sword-lengths wide, just to avoid anybody coming to fatal blows during heated debate.

it's amusing to watch Obama atm, we had a very similar flurry of hope and dreams when Rudd was elected here. now look what we have, internet censorship, rolling back of benefits to seniors and families having babies and a string of empty promises.

give it just a little time and that shine will rub off revealing the politician underneth.

What a rubbish post. "Rolling back of benefits"? Er no. Seniors are actually receiving thousands of dollars in cash bonus' on top of their fortnightly stipends and this is to pre-empt the conclusion in the report into pensions due for release in the next few months. As for "families having babies" you're presumably talking about the means test for the baby bonus. Prior to the means test, everyone who had a baby got a cheque for $5000 - a blatant bribe. Now, that cheque is only available for people earning less than $150,000, which frankly, is still way to high.

The minister must start listening to the experts, who have repeatedly made the point that most predatory risks to children lurk in those areas of the online world this kind of filtering will do little to combat.

Blacklists and content scanning will have, at best, a negligible impact on child predators and pornographers. Any progress will be quickly negated as pedophiles adapt to the technology. Even proponents of the filter have to recognize that.

Given the enormous monetary and social costs, I can't believe this will ever really materialize. I'm sure some politicians exploited the issue for their own benefit, but I suspect the idea will either go away or be implemented in a symbolic, watered-down manner.

I can't believe this will ever really materialize. I'm sure some politicians exploited the issue for their own benefit, but I suspect the idea will either go away or be implemented in a symbolic, watered-down manner.

That's basically what happened in Finland: police maintains the blacklist and supplies it to the ISPs, who may or may not use it, and even those who do, will upon complaint generally just advice their clients how it can be bypassed (changing DNS server settings).

What's more, the list has been leaked to the public (now in wikileaks) - and it turned out some 90%+ of the sites censored aren't child porn at all (mostly just adult, especially gay porn, also some totally non-porn sites).

Well... The Senator for Censorship is becoming more and more unpopular in australia.... I was part of his trial for internet censorship (was... i switched ISP's) and let me say this... it was appalling the speeds we were getting.... I mean.. loading up google.com took at least 30 seconds on a decent speed broadband

Umm.. at the risk of hearing a *woosh* in the next few seconds, I don't think "shadow" (in this context) means what you think it means.

Whenever you hear something like "the shadow minister for foreign affairs", they're referring to the guy (or gal) in the major opposition party who is their current "authority" in the field (in my example, foreign affairs), or at the most, in some cases, the person who's currently in line for that office should the opposition win the next general elections (or equivalent) and form government.

This is not some lower-level, deputy-minister/under-secretary type, who actually works for/in the government that's proposing this bill.

In other words, we're talking about the people who are trying to oust the current government, so it's no surprise that they take whatever opportunity they get to snipe at them. Besides, as others have pointed out above, they're not exactly squeaky-clean in this matter either, having proposed something similar in the past when they were in office (what's worse, they were allegedly doing it as some sort of a back-room deal to advance some other bill).

I get that this guy isn't really a secret operative in some alien-human hybrid black-oil conspiracy. But the title of "Shadow Minister" does still imply such to those of us who watched a certain popular TV (TeleVision) show known as the X-Files in the 1990's.

It's OK though, because as we all know, jokes have been scientifically proven to be much funnier when they're fully explained, so for that I thank you:-)

Lol.. Man, I totally missed it. It's been so long since I've watched the X-Files (refused to watch the last movie, wasn't really too keen on the last few seasons when they suddenly changed the "mythology") that I didn't make the connection. All is clear now!:)

i still object to the term "shadow" anything, mainly because of the immediate gut negative reaction, that the post you were responding to alludes to. i listen to the bbc alot, and i constantly hear the term "shadow" used in terms of opposition politics, and i always scratch my head over the term

in the usa, there is no pro-abortion movement, there is a "pro-choice" movement

in the usa, there is no anti-abortion movement, there is a "pro-life" movement

What's really funny is that in Australia, the toilet is typically in a small room by itself (separate from the bathroom/restroom - whereas in the US it's almost universally in the same room as the shower/bath/basin etc).

So if you have an American guest here in Australia, they might ask "where's the bathroom" (when they really want to go to the toilet). So you tell them. And a while later they come back looking confused and ask again... "where's the bathroom?". Takes you a while sometimes to

I don't think the term is going anywhere soon in Australia. It is pretty well entrenched. You can use a sporting analogy if you like. Player 1 takes up a position on the field. Player 2 from the other team takes up the opposite position and sticks like a shadow to player 1.

I can see where you're coming from but that argument only holds if 'shadow' actually does evoke these gut reactions. In Australia, its such a standard term for the opposition minister with the same portfolio, that it doesn't have those connotations. People are just too used to hearing it in this context.

If anything, when I think of 'shadow minister', I think of someone who is 'shadowing', or keeping in check, the actual minister. As someone suggested, like someone opposite you on a playing field or basketb

but that argument only holds if 'shadow' actually does evoke these gut reactions. In Australia, its such a standard term for the opposition minister with the same portfolio, that it doesn't have those connotations.

In fact, until TFS, the comicbook-geek second meaning had never occurred to me. So thank you American slashdotters.

To repay you, may I point out that the Shadow Communication Minister is a member of the Shadow Cabinet, ultimately answerable to The Leader of The Opposition, who once led the movement to bring in a Republic and overthrow the foreign empire! (But he failed.)

Or a simpler way of putting it is that the opposition party forms their own "cabinet" that mirrors the real portfolios (eg Environment Minister, Treasurer).A way of saying "if we were in power right now this is who would be Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy", in Nick Minchin's example.

Just before Christmas I emailed the Prime Minister of Australia twice. I got a reply (from Stephen Conroy!) yesterday.

--

Contact your Prime Minister
--
Thank you for your message to the Prime Minister.
Below is a copy of your comments to the Prime Minister for your records.

Senator Conroy is suggesting that peer-to-peer network traffic will be actively monitored and censored when appropriate. Most people would, at first glance, find this acceptable to catch the bad guys. The implications, however, are a bit more far reaching.

An example. The company I work for uses a Virtual Private Network (VPN). We use this to âoelink upâ our geographically separated offices. The way VPN works is that a network device in, say, my office connects directly to another network device at my head office. VPN is peer-to-peer networking. Communications between an ATM and the bank is peer-to-peer networking. Intra-government communications between networks is peer-to-peer networking.

What Senator Conroy is suggesting is that communications between the two VPN devices will be monitored and censored when necessary. How is that different to phone tapping?

To censor content you have to assess the content. To assess the content a person or computer has to read the content. To read the content being passed back and forth between two private computers (peer-to-peer communications) you have to intercept those messages. So, in effect, Conroyâ(TM)s solution is that all private communications amongst individuals or corporations will be monitored (read). Is this even legal without a court order? The solution proposed by Conroy is wiretapping without a court order.

Why is this person (Conroy) allowed to make such outrageous suggestions? This needs to be made known to people. A person who does not understand technology or law should not be making these decisions.

Internet filteringThank you for your correspondence concerning internet service provider (ISP) filtering.I appreciate your interest in this important issue.I am aware that the issue of ISP filtering has attracted criticism from people who are concerned that it will lead to censorship of the internet.Freedom of speech is fundamentally important in a democratic society. For many years however, most Australians have accepted that there is some material which is not acceptable, particularly for children.The gen

You know what? Fuck that Children, yeah I said it. I am tired of these little snot rags ruining it for the rest of us. Are parents so fucking stoned or lazy that they can't monitor their children? What the hell is Australia turning into. People give the United States a lot of shit but we have no where the level of bull in our ISP system. We have players like Comcast wanting to cut down on the amount of bandwidth used but that is for their own greedy selfish needs and not because the Government wants to sani

On the one hand Minchin refers to experts who say that the filtering will be of little help, and on the other hand he says that he installed a filter on his family computer to help protect his children.